


Sandwich Boy Jude - Stuck In The Middle

by Several_Severus_Stories



Category: Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
Genre: Anger, Angst, Broken Promises, Family, Financial Problems, Gen, Insecurity, Insults, Left out, Malorie Blackman, Middle Child, Noughts, Noughts and Crosses, Poverty, Racial insults, Racial slurs, Racism, Sibling Rivalry, crosses, crushed dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Several_Severus_Stories/pseuds/Several_Severus_Stories
Summary: Jude's angst from close to the beginning of Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses. Following canon.Feel free to leave any comments or criticism, and thank you for reading!





	Sandwich Boy Jude - Stuck In The Middle

**Jude**

Another stinking day.

Another day with nothing to do, and no money to spend. I can’t even go to school, because those bloody daggers made it impossible for me.

Even at home, I’m the least favourite child.

There’s Lynette – loopy Lynette, my crazy sister. I hate her. She has this delusion that she’s a Cross, that her skin is dark and that she’s better than the rest of us, when in reality her skin is as white as mine. Every time she has one of her “episodes”, as my parents like to call them, they insist on placating her to try and calm her down – not that it works. When I try and get her to see sense, Mum and Dad start picking on me. It’s not fair. We all walk on eggshells to spare precious Lynette’s feelings, but what about mine? Nobody else in my family is willing to disabuse her of this stupid fantasy she has of being one of them – a stupid dagger. I go out a lot because Lynette never leaves the house, and it makes me sick having to listen to her rant about how ugly white skin is, and how hers is supposedly so dark. She’s allowed to take constant swipes at me in her loony-tunes world, yet whenever I try and tell her different, my parents just tell me off, telling me to stop upsetting my sister and leave her alone.

They always, _always_ take her side. Never mine.

Then there’s my younger brother Callum. He thinks he’s so smart and so cool, when he has no idea what the world is like. He sneaks out to see that dagger friend of his, and I see the look on his face when he arrives back – that look of pure disgust as he sees our house, thinking that he deserves better than this – better than us. We’re not good enough for him either. Callum thinks that getting into a dagger school will make the daggers accept him. I know they won’t. And he always takes Lynette’s side against me too. Youngest and oldest kids together, never mind the poor sod – me – sandwiched in the middle. Callum is Mum’s other favourite. Just like she favours Lynette, Callum gets the rest of Mum’s love and attention. She thinks he’s some sort of genius because he got a scholarship to Heathcroft.

I hate that. She never cared about _my_ education. I finished school at fourteen, like most other noughts I know. I was never consulted, just told.

Nobody cared what I wanted. Ever since, Mum has constantly picked on me, nagging me to get a job or an apprenticeship. Callum is allowed to sit in a cushy classroom each day, but _I’m_ expected to work with Dad at the lumber yard, or at the bakery with stinking Old Man Tony. When I was a younger, my parents promised me that I could go to school until I was eighteen. That promise was broken when Mum went and lost her job – expecting me to pick up the slack and replace some of the income she lost. Yet do they ever sympathise that my world fell apart? No.

They just nag. Nag, nag, nag, picking on me all the time. Nobody ever asks what _I_ want to do with my life. _I_ was never given the option of carrying on with school. And Lynette can live in la-la land dreaming that she’s a Cross, but whenever I mention wanting more, wanting better, I get told I’m lazy and need to get a job. A job! A boring, monotonous, back-breaking job that will spend years grinding my body down, and which will never lead to anything. Nobody tells golden boy Callum to get a job. Lynette hasn’t left the house in years. But still Mum won’t get off my back about being more productive.

As if Crosses ever let us noughts be truly productive – unless they’re reaping any benefit.


End file.
